mtrace(3) -- Linux man page

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

The function
mtrace()
installs handlers for
malloc(),
realloc()
and
free().
The function
muntrace()
disables these handlers.
The environment variable
MALLOC_TRACE
defines a file where
mtrace()
writes its output.
This file must be writable to the user or
mtrace()
will do nothing.
If the file is not empty it will be truncated.

NOTE

The output of
mtrace()
will be ASCII but not in a friendly format.
So glibc comes with a perl-script called mtrace to make sense of it.